Great Power Technology

"What do you mean her son doesn't want her anymore? Ask me carefully, why did he suddenly want her?"

Ye Zhou frowned and walked forward, reaching out to take the mobile phone in the old man's hand. The latter looked at him helplessly and let him take the mobile phone.

The guide was still trying to communicate with the old man, but Ye Zhou immediately discovered the problem after he turned on the screen of his mobile phone.

No signal.

Ye Lan on the side took out her mobile phone, which also had no signal.

"Brother, there is no signal."

"I saw."

Ye Zhou answered helplessly, and then said to the guide:

"Tell her, it's not that her son doesn't answer the phone, it's that the phone has no signal in the first place. Was there any signal in this area before?"

The guide quickly translated it for the old man, and then replied:

"There is a signal. Is there something wrong with the phone?"

"It's not a problem with the mobile phone, it's a problem with the base station. Do you know where the base station is in this area?"

"What is a base station?"

"It's the iron tower, the signal tower."

"There are no signal towers near here!"

".Are there any weird-looking trees, or telephone poles with white boxes hanging on them?"

"There are trees! I'll take you there!"

A few minutes later, the group followed the guide to a fake tree that looked like plastic on the hillside. Watching Ye Zhou skillfully pry open the cabinet disguised as a rock, the guide was almost so surprised that he could not speak.

"Is this a signal tower? Can a tree be used as a signal tower?"

"This is a landscape-type base station. They are everywhere in the scenic area. Theoretically, if you kick a big rock on the roadside, it may be a base station. Something went wrong, and the UPS exploded."

Ye Lan looked at Ye Zhou's movements and asked curiously:

"Brother, will you still do this?"

Ye Zhou took out the deformed Hybrid battery from the cabinet without looking back, threw it aside, and then said:

"It would be weird if I didn't know how to do this. I'm afraid you've forgotten what my old line of work is."

"Oh yes, you are a communications engineer. How about it? Can you fix it?"

Ye Zhou shook his head and replied:

"It can't be repaired. The entire power supply system has exploded and the power module has burned out. Please call for repairs, but it will probably take a long time to get here. This place is too remote. First try to find a way to pick up the old lady and let her call her son. Give me a call."

After saying that, Ye Zhou stood up and planned to close the cabinet door, but a faint shout suddenly came from his ears.

"Hey!! What are you doing!!"

Ye Zhou looked in the direction of the sound, and a figure riding a donkey suddenly appeared on the grass not far below.

Wu Ping and the guards scattered around the perimeter put their hands on their waists vigilantly, but Ye Zhou recognized the man's identity.

"It's okay, don't be nervous. It's someone from Xiewei. They probably thought we were battery thieves."

A few minutes later, the man rushed to the base station angrily and wanted to continue approaching, but was blocked by Wu Ping.

Before he could speak, Ye Zhou spoke first:

"The UPS is burned out and needs to be replaced."

The visitor was stunned for a moment, looking suspiciously at the deformed battery on the side. After confirming that Ye Zhou was not lying, he asked:

"Are you tourists? Or are you from MS? Why are so many people here?"

The guide wanted to answer, but Ye Zhou shook his head slightly and said:

"We are either coordinating the maintenance, or we find that there is no signal. Come and have a look. Is there any way to deal with it?"

At this time, the visitor had already noticed that Ye Zhou's group of people had a special identity, and his originally tough tone softened.

"I just came here to deal with it. I received a signal from the network surveillance and found that the battery here was working abnormally, so I set off. Hey, the temperature has risen too much in the past two days, and the battery has aged. Sooner or later, there will be problems. Can you let me know? Give up? I want to go over and have a look."

Wu Ping moved away slightly, but still blocked Ye Zhou's body. The visitor then walked to the cabinet and was about to use the key to open the door, but found that the cabinet had been pried open by Ye Zhou.

"Did you pry open the cabinet? Brother, you are very skilled with your hands, are you a colleague?"

"We are traveling together, right? You didn't bring a backup power supply?"

"I brought it with me. It's in the bag."

As he spoke, the person took out a thin battery from his backpack. The size was much smaller than the Hybrid battery that Ye Zhou pulled out before.

"Here, do you know the new sulfur-silicon battery? Which company are you from? Haven't you come up with a new battery solution?"

"Well, I don't belong to either family. You just brought a piece?"

"Let's change one piece first. I can't carry that much by myself. They are all compatible anyway. Just hold it on first and then come back and change it in two days."

While talking, the visitor quickly replaced the battery. After restarting, Ye Zhou finally had a signal display on his phone.

"Okay, it's pretty quick. When did you receive the abnormal signal?"

Hearing Ye Zhou's question, the visitor frowned and asked:

"I said, brother, you don't want to be a business partner, do you? I can't answer your question. We don't want to compete like this."

Ye Zhou gave Wu Ping a dumbfounded look. The latter walked up to the visitor and showed him his ID. The visitor then said in a panic:

"No, leader, I don't mean anything else. My name is He Fang. I'm Huaji's co-maintenance officer. I just came here to repair the base station. I didn't do anything else."

"I know. We're also here to repair the base station. I'll just ask. If you don't want to answer, forget it."

"You can answer, you can answer! We received the signal more than 8 hours ago. We just rushed here. The road is too difficult. Otherwise, we can go faster."

"Eight hours is quite fast. The signal received in the middle of the night can be here now, which is good. Are there often problems here?"

The visitor shook his head and replied:

"It's rare for problems to occur. This is the first time this year. We are usually diligent in maintenance and deal with the signs when we find them. Now they are all agile network monitors. If the network is disconnected for more than 12 hours, we will all be held accountable."

Ye Zhou nodded slightly, then looked at Ye Lan meaningfully and said nothing.

After chatting for a few words with the maintenance personnel who came for maintenance, the group returned to the old man's house and dialed the phone. Looking at the old man's excited expression, Ye Zhou sighed with emotion.

This was his first contact with lonely elderly people living in remote areas. Before that, he had never thought that a temporarily unreachable phone call would have such a big impact on these elderly people.

He quietly walked to the door and looked inside. Unexpectedly, the room was much neater than he expected.

Indeed, as the guide said before, there is only the simplest food in the kitchen, but there is still no shortage of basic supplies such as rice, flour, grain and oil.

There were even a few strips of bacon hanging from the beams, but judging from the degree of blackening, they must have been there for several years.

"This seems okay. It seems like it's still a matter of ability to take care of yourself, right?"

The guide on the side heard his words, nodded and replied:

"That's the problem - to put it bluntly, it's still a road problem."

"The road here is too difficult. The altitude is high and the terrain is complex. It is very expensive to transport many things in, and the express delivery fee is also expensive. Leader, think about it. For example, if I want to bring a box of instant noodles, I need to be alone. It’s a separate trip, not to mention other bulky cargo.”

"So, the result is that supplies here are getting scarcer and scarcer, and these people have fewer and fewer options to choose from."

"Now I can occasionally bring them some ham sausages and the like. What if the mountains are blocked by heavy snow? They will only have some rice, bacon and other supplies left in their hands. Well, the question is: these old people, Not to mention whether they can cut the bacon, even if it is cooked, can they bite it?"

"This problem seems to be a trivial matter. Even people in the city look a little ridiculous."

"You can't eat bacon, can't you eat other things? Why don't you eat fresh ones? Why don't you eat some small bread, big steamed buns or something like that? You're not really too poor to afford them!"

"But the fact is that we can't afford it. What's expensive is not the product itself, but the journey it has taken."

Ye Zhou hummed and didn't know how to answer for a while.

As the guide said, this is a problem that is too small to be smaller. It can even be said that this is a dead end that is almost impossible to solve after the authorities have tried their best to solve basic life problems.

But the question is, because it is a blind spot, does it not exist?

For these large numbers of left-behind elderly people, doesn’t their quality of life need to be further improved?

This is an extremely sharp discussion. On one side is the ultra-high cost and ultra-low cost-effectiveness ratio. On the other side is the horrifyingly high suicide rate and the almost unbearable low-quality living standards of the elderly in rural and remote areas. No matter which side you choose, It will bring about imbalance on the other side.

So is there a way to make up for this dead end?

Using postmen to deliver daily necessities is just an imperfect stopgap measure that relies on people's goodwill rather than the rigor of the system and is bound to not last long.

He opened his mouth and wanted to speak, but no words came out.

This deep sense of powerlessness was something he had rarely experienced before.

However, the next second, a voice sounded from behind the group of people.

"The problem you mentioned is not really a problem. It will be solved by next month at most."

Ye Zhou looked back in surprise. The person who spoke was the former maintenance technician.

"How to deal with it?"

"Actually, it's not that difficult. You're overcomplicating the problem. Isn't it that the road is difficult to walk, things can't be transported in, and the cost of building the road is high?"

"Look, I came in on a donkey now, and the goods I can bring are limited. What if I switch to an electric donkey?"

“Our company has recently purchased a batch of all-terrain e-donkeys—the kind with dual-drive tracks and wheels. Their load capacity is much higher than that of live donkeys.”

"It's not just us. I heard that Guodian's equipment has also been changed. They are even more powerful. They have exoskeletons, just like Death Stranding. Also, their operating environment is a little more complicated than ours."

"And your postal service, too. It's time for your postal service to reform. Your response is always slower than ours."

"In the future, a tourist-resident service point will be set up here. After the goods are transported in from outside, they will be collected and distributed at the service point. The supply will be jointly handled by several of our companies that have daily inspections. The logistics difficulties you mentioned are , it won’t be a problem in the future.”

Hearing this, Ye Zhou asked in disbelief:

"For these families, you need an exoskeleton?"

The maintenance man shook his head and replied:

"Essentially, it's not for these households, but for the facilities here. For example, we are for base station maintenance, and the power grid is for their circuits. And to be honest, the cost is not as high as you think."

"The purchase price of one of our eDonkeys seems to be several hundred thousand. If it is spread over a dozen base stations within the range, the cost of one base station will only increase by twenty to thirty thousand. In the field of communications, this is not money at all."

"Furthermore, this place is vast and sparsely populated, but there are many villages across the country, such as the typical Medog, which is remote but has a high population concentration. In a place like that, it is very economical to use eDonkey ”

"Objectively speaking, the company's long-term costs are declining - especially when we can receive subsidies for assisting in delivering supplies."

After hearing this, Ye Zhou finally understood the official solution to this problem.

They did not intend to provide an independent solution for this problem, but conducted an integrated optimization based on existing resources and facilities.

The two major infrastructures of power grid and communications already exist. Therefore, only a moderate increase in corresponding investment, even a very small increase, can solve the problem of insufficient supplies.

However, the premise of all this is that you must first have a power grid and a ground base station.